This past week Pam and I went down to Florida to visit Pam’s 97-year-old dad.   Dick, a veteran, was also a runner up to the last decade when his knee put an end to his running.   Both my daughters ran their first road races with him when they were knee high to a grasshopper.    While I never pushed my children to run, all of them ran in high school.    I don’t know if my running had any influence on their decision but it is something they all have carried on later in their lives and now are passing on to some of their children.    ..read more

 While many of us have been touched by cancer, most of us can’t begin to imagine what it’s like to be a family with a child fighting cancer.   Bringing a little joy and support to them during the tough times has been the goal of Help in the Nick of Time. This is a story of one of those cancer patients we touched. Connor was 12 when he was diagnosed with cancer.  A passionate hockey player (goalie) and a member of the local baseball team, his life changed overnight to a life of injections, IV’s, surgery, chemo, radiation, and transfusions.    To get the specia ..read more

 It’s April 2022 and I had just finished my marathon challenge, 26.2 miles in 4 1/2 hours over 3 days.    I have the Boston Marathon on the TV and as I’m watching the runners and  I’m reminiscing about past Boston Marathons.  I realize (duh) I’ve had been running Boston off and on for the last 40+ years, at least once every decade of my life since I was in my twenties (5 decades…wow am I old). There’s always been a war in my brain between two personalities, the adrenaline driver “Mr. Risk-Taker” and the cautious (and boring) “Mr. Rational”.    In t ..read more

Colin Powell, a man I admire, wrote a book listing his 13 rules for life and leadership.  Great book.  The first rule is “It ain’t as bad as you think.  It will look better in the morning.”  I can tell you from my experience over the last two weeks, he’s right.    My situation was not as bad as I thought it was, it was much worse. Two weeks ago, facing an early Sunday morning long training run I went to bed early feeling a little under the weather.   No problem, Colin Powell says I’ll feel better in the morning.   So I was a bit surprised ..read more

My running was not so good this week.  Have you ever received one of those gifts where you said to yourself “I really wish they hadn’t. Really! The first gift came from my grandchildren.  Seems Pink eye had been running rampant at their school and while they were over it, they managed to gift it to me (not Pam…they like her more).    If you never had it, count yourself blessed.  Eyes are crusted shut, blurred vision, light sensitive, and goopy (technical term).    Often it felt like I had sand in my eyes and I would be walking around squinting ..read more

  I’m struggling with a running question that I’m hoping someone who reads this can answer for me.    When did the competition to enter a marathon race become so competitive that people will sign up a year in advance and pay hundreds of dollars just to get to the starting line?    Seriously….can someone explain to me what happened that took running a marathon from something that a few thousand elite athletes or a handful of crazies would do to something that is now the venue of hundreds of thousands of couch potatoes, soccer moms, and weekend warriors every ..read more

 It’s Boston Marathon weekend and while I'm  not able to run it this year, I still remember the thrill and excitement of the first one I ran over 45 years ago.   That sense of excitement was still there when I last ran it in 2017.   While the race had changed a lot over the years, I was still like a little kid arriving at Disney World for the first time. It's not like running the marathon is as much fun as a ride on Space Mountain or Expedition Everest (at least to most people).    It’s just that there is so much effort that goes into getting to the ..read more

A number of years ago in one of my blogs I boldly stated that anyone could do a marathon as long as they put in the training.  I’m now living proof of how wrong I was.   Over the last 3 years I racked up over 4000 miles, consistently averaging over 100 miles a month.   It’s the first time in my life that I have run continually for that many months in a row.   Given that dedication to insanity it would be natural to believe that a marathon would be the proverbial walk in the park (pun intended).   Not even close.    In fact over the l ..read more

The other day I was out for a run and as sometimes happens, I was really struggling.    Overnight the hills in the neighborhood had gotten bigger, the air had gotten thicker and harder to breathe, my shoes were suddenly made of cement, and every old knee, hip and muscle injury decided it was time for a visit.     I’m only a little over a mile into the run and that voice of self-doubt in my head (you know, the one that always reminds you of what you can’t do and gives you excuses to quit) grabs a megaphone and starts whining.  “You can’t do this.  Your ..read more

Age had been a regular theme in my running blogs over the last few years.  I don’t feel particularly old (most days), but every once in a while I have to face some situation that reminds me I’m not as … (fill in the blank…strong, fast, handsome, hairy, mobile, etc.) as I once was.   No surprise here but it does raise two questions: how old is old these days and when does the brain catch up with the reality of the body. The oldest person in the world is currently 118 years old.   In a Scientific America article, researchers projected that if you are not killed by cance ..read more